2) Recruit, recruitment

1. During the war all young men were to the army.

2. He worked as a officer.

3) abolish, abolition, abolitionist

a) in the North supported of slavery.

b) Southern planters claimed that slavery could not be .

4) assassin, assassinate, assassination

1. Today the risk of has been reduced by modern security sys tems.

1. Abraham Lincoln's was a Virginian actor John Wilkes

Booth.

c)-Unfortunately Lincoln did not become the last American president to be .

5) vindictive, vindictiveness, unvindictive

a) Lincoln devised an plan of Reconstruction.

b) people are usually unwilling to forgive.

c) Southerners did not expect northern authority to act with such

6) curb (n, v)

a) means a control or limit of something which is not desir able.

b) He tried his bad temper.

7) tenant, tenancy

a) After the Civil War all former slaves became farmers.

b) is the right to use land or live in a building on payment of

rent.

Growth and transformation

During the period between two great wars – the Civil War and the First World War transformed America from a rural republic to an urban state. By the end of the 19^th century, people had settled almost all regions of the continental USA – the frontier disappeared. Instead there appeared new cities and towns built in one generation.

The remarkable progress of a new nation filled Americans with a consciousness of power and self-confidence. As vast territories still remained unsettled, millions of people continued to stream into the west, giving push to the development of great factories, steel mills and transcontinental railroad lines.

The economic growth brought the corresponding problems – cities grew too quickly to give proper housing and government to their growing populations, working conditions were rather poor. Besides, new white settlements ruined the life of Native Americans, who were forced to move to the less attractive lands in reservations.

The Last Frontier

When the Civil War started, the vast territories west of Kansas and Nebraska were populated mainly by Native Americans, among them were the Great Plains tribes and the Southwestern tribes.

American government encouraged the settling of these territories by the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted free farms of 64 hectares to citizens who would occupy and improve the land. The same year the Central Pacific Railroad – the first transcontinental route was started. In 1869, it met the Union Pacific Railroad in Utah linking the east and west territories •of the country. By 1884, there were already four great railroads connecting the central Mississippi Valley area with the Pacific.

Railways promoted the rush of people to the mountainous regions of the Far West, where miners established communities seeking for gold, silver, iron and other natural resources of the Rocky Mountains. Between 1870 and 1890, the population living between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean grew from 7 million to nearly 17 million.

As new western territories were settled, the question of their statehood arose. Between 1876 and 1889, Congress prevented the admission of any new states, but in 1889, Republicans pushed through the Omnibus Bill granting statehood to North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, and Montana. In 1890, Wyoming and Idaho were admitted to the Union, and the same year the Census Bureau announced the disappearance of the frontier.

The Utah territory was not granted statehood for a longer period, because the Mormons, who were the majority of the population and controlled the government, practiced polygamy. But the territory prospered, so when the Mormons agreed to abandon polygamy, Congress voted Utah into the Union in 1896.

Westward Expansion and Native Americans

Railroads not only bound the nation together economically, but also had a massive impact on the Native American tribe people, who originally lived on these territories. The contacts with white settlers elicited a variety of responses from Native Americans. Some tried to adapt to white invaders by trading with them, others resisted violently. The fierce opposition was provided by the Sioux tribe of the Northern Plains and the Apache tribe of the southwest, who fought against the policy of concentrating Indians on reservations.

Indians' fighting against the white settlers resulted in a series of bloody battles and massacres. The most legendary battle occurred in 1876 near the Little Big Horn River in southern Montana, when the Sioux troops led by Chiefs Rain-in-the-Face, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse annihilated white troops led by Colonel George A. Caster.

There were other Indian victories as well, but shortage of supplies and superior forces of the white overwhelmed Indian resistance and forced them into reservations. The other reason for the change in Indian life was extermination of buffalo, which had been so vital to native cultures – the Plain Indians depended on the buffalo for food, clothing and shelter.

By 1890, mostly all Native Americans lived on reservations, which were usually parts of their previous territory less desirable for whites. Mostly reservations were situated in the northwestern and southwestern parts of the country.

The reservation policy provided by the government proved ineffective – though the reservations were not isolated geographically, they remained isolated politically and socially, and Indian traditional culture was disrupted.